Queen of Hearts
by imsmith
Summary: As the line between human and experiment blurs, Alice must decide if Carlos' return is a miracle or an assassination attempt. How much of her own humanity remains as she searches for a cure? Takes place after Extinction, completely disregards Afterlife.
1. Chapter 1

So this is how it starts, always.

Me waking up half-naked on some hard, cold surface with God knows how much brain trauma trying to remember my name.

The first thing I always realize, besides the fact that my head fucking hurts and that someone should dim the lights in this God forsaken place is that something is wrong.

Of course the nakedness and the headache contribute to this idea, but there's always that feeling that something is off: like a DVD case missing the disk inside, a cell phone without batteries. On the first glance, nothing seems out of place, until you realize something vital is missing.

The first time this happened, I woke up with a shower curtain that, even in unconsciousness, I had managed to drape over myself artistically. The second time, I had a rectangle of tissue paper. Last time it was a shitload of wires.

This time, it was blood.

I sat up slowly, testing out shaking muscles, trying to control the nausea climbing up my throat. The last thing I needed was more bodily fluids skin. My head was splitting—fucking lights—as I tried to remember what happened.

_A test tube slowly filling with blue liquid. A warehouse littered with bodies. A man with blue eyes, kneeling to my level, a man in a wheelchair, a little girl, three red dots doctors test tubes needlespainlightsterrorRUNtrappedRUNneedlespainaloneDEADDEADDEADDEAD_

I opened my eyes. I could still feel the images flickering behind my eyes, things I knew, things I should know, but nothing I could make sense of now. Things are always like this, I consoled myself. It's easier after you remember your name.

My name.

"Alice." I whispered to myself, and felt the rightness of it, felt it lock into place. It's always odd, coming awake like this, knowing and not knowing. Knowing the routine of waking up, hurt and alone, not remembering how I came to be there or anything before it.

Routine. What kinda of fucking person makes a routine out of waking up half-amnesiac full naked on tile floors?

I screamed out of pure frustration and fear. It helped. Not my headache, but my sanity.

I looked down, deciding I could at least discover who's blood was coagulating on my skin. It was me.

So much for my sanity.


	2. Chapter 2

As I gazed into a near-perfect copy of my face, I felt the memories riot up again.

_Water. Test tubes. A sphere with mirror images of me. Catching a naked me in the middle of battle. Talking to a room full of self-righteous assholes. "I'm coming for you. And I'm going to be bringing a few of my friends." A row of blue bubbles, hundreds of Alices. _

"Oh yeah." I whispered, the details slowly filtering to the surface. I was in Nevada, at Dr. Asshole's lab. And the me lying on the floor was one of his attempts to find a perfect anti-virus, a cure to the T-virus. A job that I had taken up after his not-so-unfortunate death.

A fresh wave of nausea interrupted my nostalgia. Time for me to see to my body first, then I could remember why I had killed myself. I pushed dead me away and levered my own aching body out of the gore.

I was in the bedroom—or the laboratory I'd set a cot up in and designated as my bedroom. I heard water running nearby, so I followed the sound into the next room. Apparently, I had left the shower running. Good thing I didn't have to pay the water bill anymore.

Coagulated blood, I'd learned, took a long time to wash off. I scrubbed myself raw as quickly as I could. For one thing, it was creepy taking a shower with a dead woman sharing my face in the next room. For another, a few more memories trickled back reminding me that I have this well-founded fear of tear gas spraying into my face from the spigot. I showered with my face away from the showerhead, just in case.

I saw a set of clothes lying on the cot back in my facsimile of a bedroom, but as they were spattered with blood, I figured I'd look around for less gruesome attire. I found a closet full of Dr. Isaacs' dress shirts. They were clean, but they also smelled of antiseptic and corruption. I'd rather run around naked than prance about in Dr. Asshole's clothing.

I shifted through several drawers when I found a stash—mine I presumed, though I couldn't remember putting it there yet. They weren't so much clothes as a bunch of holsters and sheathes strung together by fabric, but as I had more than enough weaponry to cover me, it was certainly decent enough.

I found my boots lying underneath the cot. I smiled. I liked boots. I tucked a few knives into their customary places, and settled onto the cot, my back against the wall.

"Now would be a perfect time for those memories to come back." I said, to the opposite wall.

I think the wall was more communicative than my brain.

All right. If my brain wasn't going to supply the answers, I'd have to looking for them myself.


	3. Chapter 3

My lab let out into the hall. I padded down the half-lit passage, my boots barely echoing.

The first room on my right opened into a trashed lab, but the broken glass on the floor had been there long enough to gather dust, so whatever had happened here must have gone down before I passed out. There was nothing there that could help me, so I moved on.

The next room looked like a sort of call room, with rows of cots set up. Blankets lay haphazardly on the floor and dresses, shorts, boots and weapons littered the room, closely stacked to each cot, like each one had belonged to a specific person who had just walked out to grab a bite to eat.

Or had become a bite to eat.

I ran my hand along the fabric of a dress laying on one of the makeshift beds. Whoever had been here before wasn't here now. This place had an emptiness to it, one of the things I'd remembered all too well.

A loud clang jolted me from my reverie. I spun around, automatically sinking into a crouch as I scanned the room, searching for the movement. My adrenaline spiked for a moment until I noticed the precariously stacked pile of weaponry in the corner. I could see where a knife had slid of the pile and landed point down in the floor.

"Dumbass." I whispered to myself, tucking one of my own knives back into my waistband. I stalked over and jerked it from the floor. "Big Bad Alice, huh?" I looked over at the pile and noticed a pair of short swords, and added them—along with a couple other choice pieces—to my ensemble. They made me feel safer, if not any less idiotic.

I turned to leave when my boot caught on the edge of a blanket and drew it off the cot it had previously covered. Underneath it was a corpse.

It was me. Again.

This time I couldn't help myself and the vomit pushed up my throat and onto the floor.


	4. Chapter 4

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, then, realizing I still had the blanket attached to my boot, used it to scrub my hand clean. I looked into her—my—face.

She looked…vacant. There were no wounds to indicate what had killed her, only the corpse cold grayness of her flesh to hint that she was no longer there.

I waited for the flash, the enlightenment of the memories to tell me what happened here, but I got nothing.

"Come on, come _on,_" I whispered raggedly. I had to remember something, _anything. _

Nothing.

I slammed my fist into the floor, creating a small fist-sized dent in the tile. I looked at the me on the floor, so peacefully decaying, and for a moment, I envied her that. I had seen so many people die, faces contorted in terror and pain, faces that my brain couldn't even remember but my soul would never forget, etched into my being. I was so tired of waking up alone, with only the empty eyes of corpses to witness it.

But a selfish part of me didn't want to die. A stupid part of me wanted to go back to the years of light and life and people. A naïve part of me believed I still could.

I arranged the other Alice's limbs around her and covered her with another of the blankets underneath her.

Which was why the sword whistled above my head and not into it.

"Fuck!" I half whispered, half snarled, launching myself away into a dive roll. I spun around to face my opponent…which was also me.

One of these days I was going to meet someone who did not share my face.

That day really can't come soon enough.

The other Alice eyed me coolly, assessing my stance. She flashed her sword, slicing it up then down again, more to show off than for any defensive maneuver.

"You missed." I said, easing my own newly-acquired short swords from their sheathes. "Guess they don't make clones like they used to."

"What makes you so sure you're not a clone yourself?" she said, spring towards me. Her comment caught me off-guard than her physical attack. _What if I'm not really Alice? _Her sword sliced through my shoulder and decided I could figure it out after this was over.

I parried her next attack, bringing it to the floor and slammed my elbow into her face. I used the momentum to carry her to the floor, but she rolled away before I could bring my swords into her mid section.

She whipped around me, trying to plant her sword in my back, but I ran forward, accelerating so I ran a few steps up the wall and landed behind _her _instead. My next attack sank into her side, not serious enough to kill, but enough to slow her down.

In such close quarters, her sword was useless, so she tried to force a knife inside my ribs instead, but I sent her blade flying behind me instead.

She ducked underneath my next attack, and flew out the door. I sprinted after her into the hall, sliding a bit even in my boots.

The passage seemed vaguely familiar to me, like the halls in a house lived in long ago: I remembered them, but I was still surprised when she abruptly dodged through a door and into a large warehouse.

I stepped into the room and jerked to the stop as the memories took over.

_Rows of blue bubbles holding versions of me. Helping one of the new clones out of her shock, three others clones standing around her. A needle in my arm, slowly drawing blood from the vein. Cells eating each other underneath the microscope lens. Rows of cots filled with Alices. _

My opponent's punch prevented me from remembering much more, forcibly jerking me from the past into the present. I was still dazed when she landed on top of me, straddling my torso and one of my arms as she locked her hands around my throat.

I used my one free arm to aim at her eyes, but she lifted my head from the ground slightly and slammed it back into the floor, making it almost impossible to concentrate.

_Matthew, his blue eyes widening in pain and horror as they carted him away. Watching as they held me down, forcing the blue liquid into my veins. Running down white halls from infected dogs. Rocks floating in the air, men dying with blood in their eyes, crowsflamesdyingDEATHrunRUNRUNdeathRUN. _

_Carlos. _

I came back to the present with precious little air supply left. My vision was filled with blue-black dots now, and I barely had enough strength left in my limbs to struggle. My stomach clenched as it felt unconsciousness and death looming closer, and I had a vision of the Alice in the cot room, the emptiness that death had brought to her.

Fuck that.

If I was going to die, it was not going to be at the hands of another of the Umbrella Corporation's _creations._ If I was going to die, it was going to be while I ripped out the spinal column of each and every board member.

I was _not _going to die when I couldn't even remember why I was dying.

I reached into the core of me that I normally strayed away from—the part of me that only awoke when I was asleep of desperate.

Suddenly the world sharpened, and I could sense every artery, every pulse, muscle, fiber, cell in the other Alice, and they seemed so fragile to me, so breakable.

She didn't notice that her nose was bleeding, but she jerked a hand up once her eyes started to bleed. She released her hold on my and looked in horror at her hand as her blood poured over it. Then she looked at me.

"I'm sorry." I whispered, tears running down my own face as she slumped over, the life in her gone.

I stared at her corpse—my third one today--and I couldn't help it.

I threw up everything I had left of my stomach on the polished tile floor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello everyone! Sorry for the wait--school is silly (I don't know why I waste my time writing analytical papers when I could be writing fan fiction)**. **I really appreciate the reviews though--it's so much easier to write when you know someone's reading it. Anyway, enjoy!**

I wiped my mouth off again, dismissing the taste of bile from my mouth for a second time that day. My stomach clenched, part nausea, part dread stirring my innards. I wrapped my arms about myself and folded into myself, tried to ignore the girl next to me I'd just killed with—with what? I didn't even know what they'd done to me, how much they'd changed me in their experiments.

Or was it really me in the experiments? What if it was it like the other Alice said, what if _I _was the clone? What if I had just killed Alice, the real Alice? I rested my forehead on the slippery slick tile, letting its cool touch seep into my fevered thoughts.

_Ok_, I coached myself. _What if I was just a clone? Does it matter?_ It didn't change that I needed to eat, sleep, survive. It didn't change the fact that the Umbrella Corporation had to be taken down, that the rest of mankind needed some sort of cure to survive.

My memories shifted, revealing images of the past years, of the world as one huge wasteland. Clean water was scarce, food was scarcer. Oil and gas was starting to run out, and no one was able to live in one place long enough to replenish it. And once people couldn't refill their cars and trucks, they couldn't outrun the T virus. And then there would be nothing left.

OK. Maybe I was the real Alice. Maybe I wasn't. It didn't change the fact that I needed to get off my ass and save the world, or something equally dramatic.

I had a feeling I was the only person who could.


	6. Chapter 6

The rest of my search of the facility didn't bring me into any more contact with living humans. I found the kitchen and forced some gruel (I think it might have been oatmeal once) down. After all that throwing up I was starving, and I had a feeling I'd be needing sustenance for what was ahead.

I'd found my old pack—battle scarred and filled with weaponry and ammo and added some food to the stores. My sixth sense was telling me I wouldn't be staying here much longer. I needed answers, and all I could find here were blank stares from cooling bodies.

Another room produced a well-used set of walkie talkies, a few flashlights, some batteries. I pocketed them all—working technology outside was rare. If push came to shove I could pawn them for some food. Or if things got really desperate I could use the battery acid to protect myself.

I'd also found a room full of blood samples—mine—and notes. Judging from the frustrated scribbles, it didn't look like I'd gotten very far. My memories came in fits and starts, sometimes as a sort of epileptic attack, other times they appeared as seamlessly and as easily as sea to shore. I could remember college—a scholarship from the Umbrella Corporation, late night cram sessions, my first martial arts class at the gym…failing biochemistry.

Hmmm. It didn't seem like a good sign for me finding the cure for mankind. Make people bleed out of their eyes? Easy. Biological science? Impossible.

I scooped the notes into my pack and carefully arranged extra clothes and food samples around the blood to cushion them against any damage they might suffer. Maybe I could coerce an Umbrella researcher to help me. The world was full of possibilities.

A loud crash outside jerked me from my tour of the building. I slid to the window, exposing as little of myself as possible. At first glance the landscape was empty—though that in itself was odd. I'd been staying here more than long enough to attract attention from the infected, but the area beyond the fence was clean. I realized why as soon as I saw the hole in the wiring of the heavy-duty fences—they'd managed to break through.

Another crash jerked my attention closer to home.

"Shiiiiiiiiit."

Not only had they managed to get inside the fences on the outer perimeter, but they'd torn through several of the windows on the ground floor, meaning I had a matter of minutes before most of my escape routes were cut off.


	7. Chapter 7

I grabbed my bag and bolted out into the corridor. My brain had finally decided to cooperate with me and I remembered a staircase that would lead to the garage and my only decent chance at route.

I tore past the long rows of rooms, wishing I'd had more time to remember what had happened here. Oh well. Survival now, nostalgia later.

The door at the end of the hall dented outward and I heard the frustrated moans of the infected beyond the metal surface.

_Shit. _That door was the most direct route to the garage. I switched back and sprinted towards the other end of the hall. I avoided the elevator—I'd had too many bad experiences with those to try my luck with that death trap. I skidded to a halt in front of the door and jerked it open—right into the face of an infected.

I backpedaled until my back hit the wall behind me, whipping out my handguns guns as I went. He would have been an attractive business exec, I noted dispassionately as he charged through the door. Even with the deterioration of flesh you could see his clean bone structure. It ran towards me, hands reaching towards my throat. I waited until the last possible second to empty a clip into his head and he crumpled to the ground.

I stepped over him, surveying the mangled mess of blood and bone.

"So much for bone structure," I said. A crash beyond drew my attention to the hallway beyond the door and the downed infected. Heavy footfalls drew my attention to the stairs beyond the door. I leaned over the edge of the stairwell and saw a horde of infected stumbling up the stairs.

"Shit shit shit," I half-sung to myself as I kicked the body of the infected out of the way of the door. I grabbed a chair from the other room and wedged it under the handle of the door, but I knew that wouldn't last long. At the other end of the hall I heard metal groan under the pressure of the infected and watched as one filthy hand shoved itself through a tiny opening between the door and wall, scraping what little was left of its flesh off in the process.

Damn it, _why _couldn't they make doors outlast undead attacks these days?

"Think Alice, _think," _I muttered. Behind me the chair holding the door closed shattered and infected streamed through the opening. I nailed two in the head before scrambling into the room I'd gotten the chair from and locked flicked the lock shut behind me.

If I'd been hoping there would some sort of magical secret passage to safety, a glance proved me wrong. There were no vents, no doors, only a window with a shiny metal grille, mocking me. The groans of the infected grew louder behind me as I shoved the generic furniture aside, trying desperately to find any way out. I pulled ineffectually at the grille.

I heard a crunch as the door behind me wavered under the pressure of twenty dead weights at once. I yanked at the grille and realized that it wasn't made of iron as I'd been expecting, but a lighter metal—something mixed with aluminum. Whoever built this place must have thought that there wasn't much chance of a break-in from the seventh floor.

Grasping at this new chance, I grabbed hold of an edge of the fencing and yanked, glad for once that these experiments had given me more skills than melting someone's brain out their ears.

The metal cut into my fingers. The blood made it more difficult to hold onto the grille, but adrenaline and desperation gave me enough strength to peel off a small corner at the bottom of the window. I used the butt of my short sword to smash the glass, clearing away as much of it as possible.

The opening was only just large enough to wedge my shoulders through, and I felt glass and metal cut into my shoulders. The ground was too far away for even me to make a safe landing, even if it wasn't littered with the infected.

I looked up. The side of the wall had a decorative paneling that ran up the outside of the window, just a small ledge with geometric shapes cut into it, but it was enough for me to rest my weight on.

I wriggled my hips through and pulled my legs out , earning me more scratches. I almost fell of the ledge when I reached my arm back through the window to pull my pack out, but I grabbed onto the fencing and righted myself. I yanked my bag through just as the first of the infected filtered into the room. Their hands reached through the small opening I had created, and I edged as far away from them as the ledge would allow.

I looked down again. Since that wasn't an answer, then the only place to go...was up.


	8. Chapter 8

I yanked my short swords out of their sheaths and slammed them into the wall. I lifted one sword and raised it a few inches above me, then repeated the process with the other sword. It was painfully slow progress, but I only had to climb a few levels this way to reach the roof. Luckily the brick wall structure was old enough that I didn't have too much trouble shoving the points into the wall.

I used my feet to help me where I could, and I made it to the roof in maybe ten, fifteen minutes. I hauled myself over the edge and let myself collapse for a few precious seconds. My arms burned like I'd stuck them in a barrel of battery acid, and the pain made me oblivious to the world around me for a minute.

"Alice," I heard a voice rasp. I rolled away from the sound, but my muscles protested at the movement and one of my swords dropped my fingers.

"Alice," it said again, and I felt fingers wind around my leg. I looked down and saw...me. Again. But unlike the last live Alice, this one could barely raise her head, let alone kill me. Her hair was tangled around her face, and blood stained her face and arms.

"Alice," she said, her voice dry. "Don't you remember me?"

"Honestly? No," I readjusted my grip on my sword. I saw something flicker in the other Alice's eyes, but she didn't let go of my leg.

"Something happened. They did something."

"What?" I said. "What happened here?"

"We were...looking for a cure. Alice and the rest of us. We didn't find anything, but Alice thought that if enough of the clones survived, we might be able to attack the Umbrella Corporation and find someone there who could help us."

"And Umbrella attacked?"

"No," she whispered. "We did. At first, a bunch of the older clones just died, just fell down where they were, nothing wrong with them. I felt it, it was like my heart was trying to stop beating, but then it passed. But then the others, the newer clones started killing the rest of us. I don't know how many are left."

"Why? What would cause that?" I asked, bending down so I could get a better look at her face.

"I don't know. It just happened so fast. It was like a switch going on or something." Her eyes glazed over for a bit, then refocused on me. "Are you Alice?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said.

"I hope so," she sighed. "Alice will know what to do." Her grip slackened on my leg. I felt for her pulse, but there was nothing there. I laid her out nicely on the floor. Another dead Alice. Another set of unanswered questions.

This wasn't making my headache any better.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, considering my options. I stared out over the landscape the empty landscape beyond the roof. _If only I had a flying car_..., I thought. I turned around to survey the other side of the building. I blinked at the helicopter on the opposite end of the roof.

"That'll work too."

I jogged to chopper. It looked like it was in good condition, and knowing Dr. Isaacs, he'd probably had the thing stocked with tons of supplies in case he'd had to make a quick getaway. He had needed one, but unluckily for him, he hadn't been in the position to reach it. Luckily for me, I was.

I threw my bag into the passenger seat beside me. I hadn't ever flown a helicopter before, but I'd been in one enough to know the basic controls. Besides, it's amazing what you can manage when you have a couple hundred semi-dead beings chasing after you.

The helicopter blasted to life with enough noise to wake the dead, but it lifted off the rooftop. I had a little trouble balancing her out in the wind, but I managed to keep her on a fairly level flight path. I took one final look at the compound below me. I could see the infected scrambling around on the ground below.

"Sayonara assholes," I said, flipping them off. I turned around in my seat so I faced the window. "Now, let's get out of here."


	9. Chapter 9

The helicopter crashed four hours later in the middle of the desert.

Take-off had been surprisingly uncomplicated. Landing, however, proved to be more difficult. Within the first hour of leaving the compound, I'd spotted a river. The river fed into a large lake, practically an ocean by today's current environment where desert had taken over most of the landscape.

The lake was almost two miles wide at its largest point and the mountain just beyond its shore explained how it'd had managed to survive the arid climate that had overtaken the world these last years. There was even some greenery around the edges of the river and lake.

I realized when I was halfway across the lake that the helicopter's tank was starting to run empty, but the lake was no place to land the copter, and I was experienced enough with the helicopter to be confident landing it somewhere in the mountains.

As it was, I had trouble enough navigating around the crags. The sun was beginning to set and the stone peaks looked particularly jagged in the waning light. I wove through mountain passes as best I could, but I was racing daylight and the gas tank to find a safe place to land.

I knew I had to land now or risk a landing in the dark—not high on my list of options when I still had that blinding headache. I chose a stretch of ground that looked flatter than the others and maneuvered the joystick into position.

At about seven feet from the ground, one of the blades clipped a rocky outcropping and sent the helicopter veering out of control. The copter wheeled on its side rolled over the edge of the ground I'd been trying to land on.

I yanked at the controls, but one of the blades had bent in the initial fall and made it all but impossible for me to maintain a level flight pattern for more than a few seconds. Another rocky peak loomed in front of me, but I had no way to avoid it.

Time seemed to elongate, sound disappeared as I realized the inevitable was about to happen.

"Aw, fuck," I said.

The left side of the copter slammed into the rock face, sending helicopter rolling down the mountain. I managed to gain control for a few desperate minutes, and then suddenly, jarringly, I was out of the mountain range.

But I wasn't out of danger yet, either. I wrenched the gears around, trying to balance out the copter, but the machine decided it had been through enough for one day, and just seconds after I'd made it out of the mountains, the engines coughed once, twice, then died.

As the helicopter began its free fall, I scrambled out of the flight harness and leapt out into the air. The ground was maybe thirty feet below me. It might have killed me had I been the Alicebefore the T9 virus—that is if I really was Alice and not just some clone of her—but it was only slightly bone-jarring to me now.

The desert sand was softer than the mountainside would have been, but not by much. I kept my knees soft as I hit the ground and let myself roll out of the jump to distribute some of the force but even so, my body ached with the impact.

My roll had carried me to all fours, but I pushed off and threw myself to the side as the helicopter came crashing down after me. It skidded along the sand for a few feet before it flipped over and came to a rocking stop.

I sighed and collapsed back into the sand.

My cuts from the glass window were now gritty with sand, accentuated by green and purple bruises that were already forming from my rocky landing. My throat burned and still felt tender after my bout with the other Alice, and my muscles had stiffened during the long helicopter ride. And I couldn't forget my splitting headache.

"And to think that only a few hours ago I was naked and covered in blood," I said to myself. "Look how far I've come."

I thought of all the questions I needed to find answers to—about the other Alices, about the memory loss, about my research, but I could only come up with one response.

I picked myself off the ground and hauled myself into the wreckage of the copter. I used some of the supply bags to make myself a pillow, yanked a tarp over my head, and fell asleep.

_A test tube filling with blue liquid. A small child with an English accent telling us politely that she had killed the employees in the Hive. Rustling the sheets with Spence, making promises. Dr. Isaacs leaning over. A terrified city held hostage. A monster with Matt's eyes. Needles pricking my skin, pain, death, corpses everywhere,deathcrowstesttubespainalone._

_Carlos. _

Someone ripped the tarp off of my head. I opened my eyes to see an AK-47 pointed at my nose.

Most people are relieved when they wake from nightmares. In my case, it never helps much either way.


	10. Chapter 10

Someone shone a light past the holder of the AK-47.

"What have we here?" The speaker had a deep voice with strong a southern twang.

"Looks like some fucker from Umbrella Corp," The new voice was female, pushy.

"What should we do with her?" This came from the holder of the AK. It was gruff, as though he'd been screaming a lot. Or like he'd recently been strangled. My own throat still ached from my recent brush with death, and I might have sympathized had he not been ready to blow my head off.

"I say we shoot her now." I was liking this lady less and less.

"Why waste a bullet?" This was from the man with the gruff voice again. "I say we leave her for the infected out there. Let the little Umbrella employee get to know their creations a bit better."

"I'm not working for Umbrella Corp," I said. _Anymore. _ Once I had been on their security as part of the cover for the Hive. That was before the virus had ever known anything but the inside of a test tube, back when there was only one of me. Back when waking up to an alarm was the norm, not a muzzle in my face.

"You're flying their helicopter," said the man with the AK-47. My eyes had adjusted enough for me to see his profile. He was about six feet tall, lean, but even in the dark he looked like he was packed with muscle.

"I came from one of their bases a few hours south of here. I hijacked the copter after the infected swarmed the complex."

"That's a pretty story," drawled the other man. "Too bad you can't prove a shred of it."

"Stop wasting time. Just shoot her and take her gear." The woman elbowed the first man. I would have told her that it was a bad plan to jiggle a shooter's aim, but instead I took the opportunity to kick the gun towards his face.

The barrel connected with his nose, and he screamed. My ears, as acute as any of my senses these days, picked up the soft popping of the cartilage breaking, but I had already used the momentum of my kick to bring me out of the enclosed space of the helicopter and into a crouched position in front of the drawler.

I punched upwards towards his crotch and his grunted in pain. As he keeled over, the woman brought up her gun, but I yanked her arm aside just as she pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the soft dirt behind me, landing harmlessly.

My fist landed, much less harmlessly, slamming into the woman's throat. She fell back, gagging, just as Broken Nose came rushing for a second try. I dodged his rush, grabbing his nose as he launched past me, and twisted.

He howled again as I pulled his face towards the ground and my knee towards his stomach. As he fell to the ground, I yanked his undrawn pistol from the holster on his hip to point at my last assailant...

...who had his own pistol pointed at me.

"What are you?" he asked, staring at me. "Nobody can move that fast."

"Surprise. I can."

He shook his head. "Give up," he said. "You're outnumbered."

"Hardly," I said, gesturing with my other hand at his pals who were writhing on the ground. "Look, I could have killed all of you. I didn't. Just let me go, and we can all walk out of this alive."

"I could just shoot you right now," he cocked the pistol.

I didn't want to shoot him. Granted, it would be nice not to have to kill someone wearing my face, but it would be even nicer to not have to kill anyone. I'd only been awake for ten minutes. I should at least be awake for half an hour before I blew someone's head off. And it didn't seem like he wanted to kill me either. He laughed.

"I always liked those old Western movies as a kid. My brother and I used to stand off against each other with water pistols, just like this."

Just like this, except someone would die this time.

"He your brother?" I asked, kicking my foot towards his partner with the broken nose. He was still hissing in pain on the ground. The would-be cowboy's face lost all traces of humor.

"No. He's dead."

Damn.

"I'm sorry." I said.

"Me, too." He said. I didn't think he just meant about his brother.

"Just _shoot _her already Jemison!" the woman on the floor groaned, rasping through her throat.

I had to do something fast. "Jemison's" two companions would be up again soon, and I'd be right back where I started, only they'd have more of a reason to shoot me. Not that they needed much of one in the first place.

Time had run out. I pulled the trigger.

_Click. _

Shit_. _

Who carried around an unloaded gun?

"Ran out of bullets," said Broken Nose, and even under the bloody already crusting his mouth I could see his smirk.

_Bastard._

"I guess this is good-bye," Jemison said, then his eyes widened, and he shot.

_**Author here: I finally put this story under a category: "suspense". It's the closest thing to a disclaimer you'll get about ending every chapter on a cliffhanger. I'd promise another update soon, but my life is prone to Infected attacks (aka: homework). I can't always escape with my braincells intact. **_


	11. Chapter 11

_Carlos was dreaming. _

_He was back in Brazil playing on the outskirts of his village. His mam__ã__e had told him not to play by himself in the forest, but he was seven, almost eight, and was going to be a soldier any day now. Even then, he'd known who he would become. _

_He spotted an armadillo. It was a favorite game of his to sneak up on them and yank their tails before they could notice him. He lay completely still waiting for the animal to pass when he saw the jaguar. _

_The beauty of the creature that took his breath away. _

_Its spotted fur gleamed in the light, every inch of the silky animal was tensed. Its eyes were the most beautiful of all. They glowed golden in the dim light of the forest, seeming to gaze a million miles away. _

_When he had seen it as a boy, it had pounced on the armadillo, its powerful teeth ripping easily through the armored plates, and it was only luck, or maybe God, that had somehow kept Carlos from the predator that day. _

_But in his dream, the jaguar's gold gaze was locked on Carlos. As it stalked closer, Carlos felt a sharp bite on his wrist. He looked down and screamed as an infected dug its decayed teeth into his flesh. He was an adult again, wearing the reinforced armor from UBSC but it did nothing to stop the bites of the diseased. They multiplied around him as the lush rain forest burst into dust. He fought the horde, his limbs unnaturally heavy. There were too many of them. _

_The deadweight of the bodies dragged him to the ground. He heard a faint beeping and looked down. It was a bomb, blinking its countdown. _

_The jaguar crawled on top of his armored chest. The golden eyes of the jaguar bored into him, filling his entire vision as the beeping of the bomb kept time with his thudding heart beat. _

_Five._

_Four._

_Three._

_Two. _

_One. _

When Carlos awoke, the bomb was still beeping.

Apart from the tiny _blips, _it was unnaturally quiet. That was odd in itself. Even before the infection spread, he had always been surrounded by noise. Battlefields were never quiet, except when everyone was dead.

Now that he thought of it, wasn't _he _supposed to be dead?

His brain tried to remember after the bomb. Nothing. Not that he _should _remember anything. He _should _be dead.

But if he was dead, it shouldn't fucking hurt so much to breathe.

He opened his eyes. He was in a white hospital room. No scuffs on the floor from shoes, no nicks on the wall from the hospital. The beeping wasn't a bomb, it was a heart monitor. It _blipped _cheerily, annoyingly.

No sounds of movement in the next room. Even in the most secluded rooms, a hospital was full of the living and the dying. And recently, those in between.

Carlos closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Nothing in the past five years had made any sense, or occurred in any logical pattern. Why should death be any different? All that mattered is that he wasn't one of those _things_.

"Ah, Mr. Olivera. How nice to see you awake." The quiet voice broke his reverie. Carlos' mind, honed from years assessing threats catalogued him. Thin, balding, with the slight slouch of a man who worked indoors and had kept his physical activity to shuffling around a lab. His gray eyes seemed distant, but Carlos knew that look.

It was the same one a jaguar had before it pounced on its prey.


	12. Chapter 12

"You know my name, but I'm afraid I can't say the same," Carlos said keeping his face blank, a trick honed from years of practice.

"I am Dr. Kents. I had the pleasure of supervising your reconstruction. I must say, we did a quite a good job given what we had to work with."

"Reconstruction?" Carlos felt his hands tighten on the blanket.

"Yes, you left us very little to work with after your kamikaze heroics. A few bones here, some tissue samples there—all very spread out of course, what with the explosion and all."

"So I'm a...a clone?" Carlos asked. He didn't feel like one. Not that he knew what being a clone felt like.

"No, no, no, no, no. Not quite. We've had a bit too much trouble with our clones lately." He grimaced. "There are bits of you that are cloned, yes, but there are bits of the original you, and some bits that aren't you at all. A delightful new experiment."

Bile churned in the back of Carlos' throat. He had seen the "experiments" created by Umbrella Corp. Half human, half monster, most worse than those the T-9 virus by itself could create.

And now he was one of them.

He swung his feet over the side of the bed and looked down at himself. He _looked _human enough. His hands were scarred from years of battle, his biceps bulged underneath the thing gown, though not as much as they had before the infection spread. The smell of antiseptic stung his nose and the beeping on the monitor kept a steady pace.

"I don't understand," he said. "I wasn't exactly high on your list. Why go through all the trouble to bring me back?"

"You were one of our top recruits once. Delta Platoon was one of our most skilled teams. Whenever we had a mission that seemed impossible, you were the muscle that broke through. You can be again."

"That was then. This is now." Carlos said.

"What's changed since then?" Dr. Kents said, peering at him.

"What's changed is that now I know Umbrella Corporation is behind the virus that has killed millions of innocent lives. Including mine, I might add."

"Well, no matter." Said Dr. Kents as he strode over to a computer display. "You'll do what we want anyway."

"And how are you so sure of that?"Carlos growled, rising.

"Because," Dr. Kent said, typing at the monitor. "I control you Mr. Olivera." He hit the enter button cheerily.

Carlos' body seized. He watched in horror as his hands reached towards a scalpel laying on the counter. He tried to fight his body, but it was as though his dreams had become real and his heavy limbs no longer responded to his demands. The scalpel gleamed in the fluorescent light.

The beeping of the heart monitor was beeping at the rate of a machine gun.

He plunged the scalpel into his leg. He was held immobilized as the blood dripped down his leg and onto the pristine floor. He couldn't even scream because his vocal chords were held tight by whatever command the computer held him to.

Dr. Kents walked over to Carlos and yanked the scalpel from his leg. The skin immediately began to close itself until the rivulets of blood were all that was left of the injury.

_Santa Maria Mãe de Deus. _

At last, Carlos felt his will return to his limbs.

"What have you done to me?" Carlos whispered, staring at his blood-soaked leg.

"We have made you into the perfect weapon." Dr Kents said, smirking.

"Against the Infected?" Carlos asked.

"No. Right now Umbrella Corporation has a bigger problem on its hands. You are going to make Alice Abernathy cooperate. In one piece, or in pieces."

**I'm hoping my Portuguese is correct, since my translation skills are limited to what I can find on Yahoo Answers. **


	13. Chapter 13

"_I guess this is good-bye," Jemison said, then his eyes widened, and he shot._

I heard the soft crunch of bone splitting, then a heavy thump behind me.

"Infected!" The woman screamed.

I whirled around to face the new threat. About twenty or so had been edging closer and closer during the fight, attracted by the noise and scent of blood in the air.

"Can't a body even _kill _a person in peace these days?" Jemison muttered as he put another bullet in between the eyes of an oncoming corpse.

The woman had scrambled to her feet and pulled a crossbow from one of their packs. I offered a hand up to the man still on the floor.

"Temporary truce?" Asked the man whose nose I'd broken.

"Obviously," I said.

"Since we're not about to kill each other just yet, I guess this means introductions are in order." Jemison said as he reloaded. "I'm Carl Jemison. That feller whose face you just rearranged is Roy, and the she-hellion is Marta."

"Fuck you," Marta said dispassionately as she sent a quarrel flying into the mass.

"I'm Alice," I nodded at them. "I think." I whispered the last part under my breath.

"Nice to make your acquaintance," said Roy. "Hope it's a long one."

And with that, we launched into the fray.

I drew both of my swords twirling them in a deadly dance I'd been programmed to learn. The rhythm of the strikes sang through my blood like a '90s pop hit.

_Slice, jab, slash. _Three bastards down. A horde more to go.

Out of the corner of my eyes I realized my new tentative allies weren't doing too badly themselves. Jemison dispatched an Infected with one decisive headshot, his face wiped clean of all emotion. Roy flailed wildly about with a sledgehammer but he managed to take down two Infected on his own.

Marta stayed further back and shot the stragglers on the outskirts of the battle. She was pretty competent with the crossbow—I just hoped she didn't decide it was worth the risk to shoot me in the back.

_Stab, slash, slice. _

One of the Infected tackled Roy to the ground. Three more immediately swarmed him. I knew he had a matter of seconds before he was bitten. I wasn't finished with the Infected I had been fighting but Jemison was dealing with three assailants of his own and I knew there wasn't time.

I launched into the air, curling my body into a tight roll that took me over my current opponent's head and landed in a crouch right behind one of the Infected who was attacking Roy. I sliced at the thing's knees then immediately swung my sword up into the jaw of another.

Marta saw Roy go down and sent an arrow flying into the decayed brain of another of the Infected. The remaining two rushed me. I leapt into the air, spreading my arms straight out, executing a sort of barrel turn that sliced clean through the torso of one Infected and beheaded the other.

Roy gaped at me.

"Thank me later." I said, and turned back to rejoin the fight.

Only to find there wasn't one left to join.

As I had turned, Jemison finished off the last one, emptying his chamber into the Infected that I'd had to leave to rescue Roy, his expression still unchanging.

The only sound in the night was of Roy's labored panting.

"So what do we do now?" He asked. "Do we go back to trying to kill each other?"

"Seems like bad manners to kill someone who just saved us." Said Jemison, calmly wiping blood from his hand.

"Fuck manners. I still don't trust the bitch." Marta said, her crossbow trained on me.

I lifted my swords up, still dripping with the crusty blood of the Infected, ready to deflect if she decided to shoot at me.

"Do we really have to go through all of this again?" Roy asked. "I got my nose broken once, I don't really want to have to go through it again."

"Put the bow down, Marta," Jemison said. "We can kill her after she tells us what she has to do with Umbrella Corp."

_Not if I have a say in that._ I thought to myself, but I wiped my swords off and stowed them in their sheathes.

"My connection with Umbrella Corp is that I'm their worst enemy." I said, feeling my lips stretch into a feral grin. "And they haven't a clue how to stop me."

**Whoops. I think I went a little L4D on this chapter. Oh well, as long as it's zombie killing, I suppose it's all right. **


	14. Chapter 14

Carlos dodged through the laser grid as it swept through the narrow hallway. The grid clipped the edge of his armor, dissolving it instantly.

"I thought this was supposed to be a test," he gritted through his teeth into his mic, inspecting how close it had come to slicing though his arm.

"It is a test," he heard Dr. Kents say over the earbud. "One that will prove whether it's worth sending you out into the field or whether this was a waste of time."

"Great," Carlos said, twisting his body to avoid the oncoming laser as it made another pass, this time blocking more of the hallway. The walls were thick and strong, making it impossible for him to shoot his way through but...

He looked up. The ceiling looked less shielded than the walls and floor and he could see the air shafts were located near the top of the wall meaning that the pipes had to be relatively close. He shot several blasts upward before the grid came slicing back towards him.

He dodged again, but just barely. The hole in the ceiling wasn't much, but it was a better chance than waiting for the laser grid to slice him into dog food. He jumped up and grabbed the edges of the shattered tile. The split edges bit into his hands but he pulled himself through pain and into the roof space.

The space was packed with electrical wiring and piping, making it nearly impossible for him to move. He could barely fit his body around the pipes and still out of reach of the laser grid below. In _Die Hard, _there would have been a shaft large enough for him to inch his way along, but he was going to have to be more creative.

He shifted, his muzzle tapping the top of the enclosure with a hollow thud. Surprised, he tapped again. The empty thud was encouraging—if there was a floor above this one, he might be able to punch through it.

The top of the crawlspace was connected in segments. He pulled out his machete with some effort—trying to draw it out of its holder when he couldn't lift his elbow up required some maneuvering—and placed it in the tiny crack separating two of the plates where it would hopefully be less sound.

He had to slide the machete in at an odd angle, also because of the space, but he was able to wiggle his way through the wood. He grunted as sawdust fell on his face and into his mouth but he could feel the wood beginning to give.

With one last shove he rammed the machete through the insulation and was rewarded with a faint glimpse of fluorescent lighting. Hopeful now, he began slicing a line perpendicular to the one he had just cut. This one seemed to go faster.

He was too impatient to try to slice through any more—he didn't know what exactly the "test" entailed, but he didn't want to be trapped between an Umbrella Corp monster and a laser grid when it did. He kicked at his partially-cut section, a childish part of him enjoying creating any mess he could for Umbrella Corp to clean up.

With on final kick, the piece above him cracked enough for him to squeeze through. He hauled himself into a crouch, sheathing his machete and switching to his gun a smooth, efficient motions.

He took stalk. The hallway was hospital white with only the light blue speckles on the linoleum floors to add even a small gradation in color.

He could hear shuffling in another hallway off to the left and the soft buzz of the fluorescent lighting, but that was all.

There was no way for him to know which way to go, so he just moved forward in a half-crouch. He peeked around the corner of the hallway: nothing. He slunk through the hallways, silent as a cat stalking its prey.

Two more corridors and three dead ends later, he still hadn't run into anything. He was on full alert, knowing that tension was as much the enemy as whatever Dr. Kents was sending him up against. Nerves could kill a man as sure as a bullet to the head if they distracted him at a crucial moment, but he was no green boy playing at being a soldier.

Instead, the adrenaline sang through his blood, feeding his senses. He'd seen others crack from living in a war zone every day, even before that fateful night in Raccoon City, but it felt like home to him now. He didn't get off on it like some soldiers he'd known.

To him, Death was an old friend who walked with him each time he stepped onto the battlefield. Friends left, retired, died, but Death was always constant.

He turned the next corner. He sensed rather than saw something fall from the ceiling behind him accompanied by the sound of boots hitting the cheap linoleum behind him. He whirled to face his opponent, but he was hit in the face before he could assess the danger.

He acted on reflex, rolling with the punch, then using the momentum to carry him around into a punch of his own. He fist connected with a cheekbone and his attacker stumbled back.

"This is how you treat me after all this time, Carlos?" Alice asked.

_Alice. _

He stared. It was and it wasn't Alice. The left side of her face drooped and was discolored with purples and blues unnatural to human skin. Her bones poked too sharply through her skin and she moved with an odd disconnect that was at odds with the deadly grace of the real Alice.

But she was close—so close—to the woman he loved.

He'd spent too long drinking her in, imperfect copy though she was. With a burst of speed every bit as lightning fast as the real thing, she slammed her foot into his midsection. When he doubled over, she grabbed his head and threw him into the wall.

The impact was enough to wake him from his daze. The pain sharpened his focus. Almost as if in slow motion, he watched as she lifted a gun to his head. His hand moved instinctively, one hand grabbing her wrist and pulling the gun away from him, the other wrapping around her neck.

He brought her face down to his knee and he heard the cartilidge of her nose breaking as it connected with the bone. He slammed her face into his knee twice more, then through her into the opposite wall. A distant part of his brain noted that his throw took her too far, too fast.

He threw a punch, which she ducked, and his knuckles left a deep dent in the wall—another new development—but he was too busy avoiding her swipe to analyze it.

She scored anther hit to his kidneys, but the armor blunted the hit. He wrapped his arm around her neck, pinning her arms against her body. With just a ouch more pressure, he could snap her neck.

"Do it," he head Dr. Kents whisper through the earbud.

But this was Alice—even though she was some Umbrella Corp construction and not the real thing. She was probably just like him—forced into whatever course of action they had nightmared up this time. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, waiting for him to kill her.

"No," he said. "You'll have to do it yourself."

"Very well," he heard Dr. Kents say. "Suit yourself."

Abruptly, he felt his muscles seize. And then he began to squeeze the girl who was not Alice.

_No no no no no, _he thought as she struggled helplessly. He fought against himself and for a few precious seconds his body obeyed him and loosened. He fought a different battle now, and for those few moments he held the line against the invasive force programmed into his very cells.

In the end, he snapped her neck.

He stared at her broken body, now a crumpled form on the linoleum floors, her graying skin matching the colorless scheme of the corridors.

"What...who was she?" Carlos asked.

"A failed experiment." Dr. Kents walked around the corner in front of him. He stepped over the dead girl with distaste. "We've been trying to clone Alice Abernathy rather unsuccessfully for the past few years. At first, it seemed there was hope, but now it's degenerated down to mere photocopies of her since Dr. Isaacs died." He smiled at Carlos.

"But you, I think we finally have a chance with you."

"I don't want to kill Alice," Carlos said.

"It doesn't matter," said Kents, shrugging. "When the time comes, you won't have a choice."


	15. Chapter 15

_"I'm Umbrella Corp's worst enemy." I said, feeling my lips stretch into a feral grin. "And they haven't a clue how to stop me."_

"That's big talk for such a small gal," Jemison drawled.

I flourished my blades before whipping them back into their scabbards. I raised an eyebrow at him daring him silently to challenge me. The adrenaline was stilling throbbing through my veins and if he wanted a fight, I'd give him a hell of one.

Roy shook his head in disbelief.

"I've never seen anyone move like that. You must have jumped fifteen feet in the air."

Jemison rubbed his chin, watching me thoughtfully.

"Alice," he said. "Seems to me I've heard talk of a gal named Alice who was a thorn in the side of Umbrella Corp who wasn't quite normal."

"There's more than one person named Alice in the world," Marta said spat. I shifted on the balls of me feet trying to contain the extra energy.

Roy snorted. "The way this world's shrinking these days, it's not far off."

"Are we gonna sit here watching this traitor show off until more Infected come and see what the ruckus is about, or are we gonna waste this bitch and get a move on?" Marta raised her crossbow.

I snarled, my hands going to my smaller daggers, but Jemison stepped in between us.

"Hold it ladies," He said, giving Marta an extra long look. "As Roy so helpfully pointed out, there aren't much left of us these days. I'd like to keep humans off the list of endangered species if we can."

"Too late," Roy muttered.

"Alice, why don't you come with us back to our camp. We've a few others who'd be right pleased at seeing a new face these days and if you'd be so kind to share some of your supplies from the copter over there, I'd say we have the beginnings of a lasting friendship between all of us."

Marta hissed.

"Except Marta, that is," Roy said.

"You _can't _be thinking of taking her back with us! She was riding Umbrella Corp gear. She's one of them!"

"I was one of them," I said. "Past tense. But so were a lot of us before the outbreak." Jemison nodded.

"True enough. Are you with us?"

I looked back at the wreckage of the copter. It wasn't going to take me any further than it already had, and it was nice to be around people who weren't wearing my face. I let the fight drain out of me—though a part of me wanted to hold onto it.

"Sure," I said, sounding more relaxed than I felt. I reached my hand out and Jemison grasped it. His hand was huge compared to mine. He squeezed my hand slightly and I responded with a grip of my own. He winced.

In the distance, an eerie moan echoed through the hills.

"Best get going," Jemison said.

After that, we worked quickly. We raided the helicopter of its supplies. Roy found one of the snapped helicopter blades and brought it with him—the sharp edges would slice nicely through the Infected. It was waste not, die not these days.

Marta sorted through the bodies as she retrieved her arrows from their bodies. These carcasses were so decayed and old that there was little left for humans to use, but she found an old pack of cigarettes on one of them.

"Still smells like corpse rot," Jemison muttered as he lit up, but he kept smoking the cig.

Waste not.

Another moan pierced through the night.

"Looks like it's time for this party to hit the road." Jemison said.

"Before something crashes it." Roy added.

"Something already has." Marta said, glaring at me.

I ignored her. I'd save my breath.

Waste not.


	16. Chapter 16

In the weeks that followed, Carlos killed Alice a hundred times.

Dr. Kents made Carlos his own life-size toy soldier. He crafted laser mazes, minefields, knife-edged obstacle courses to test his latest experiment.

He killed her in combat, in cold blood, shooting distance, and as close as lovers. At first, Dr. Kents had to force Carlos to do it, but eventually, Carlos found he didn't need his prompts.

He was angry at Alice. Angry at her for putting him in the middle of this. Had it not been for her, he would have been dead, but free. Just another one of Umbrella Corp's creatures.

And the more he killed her, the more deadened his emotions became. All he felt was resentment, anger, and occasionally, fear. Every time Dr. Kents invaded his mind, he felt a little more of the Carlos of before leave. His feelings dragged him to the past and future, but if he focused on the _now, _he could almost block out his prison.

He had grown accustomed to his new body, too. His legs moved too quickly, his ears heard conversations that he should have been deaf to, but nothing was as unsettling as Dr. Kents' voice in his head.

"Kill her," He whispered in childlike glee.

Carlos bit back a retort. Dr. Kents' intrusion had occurred during the middle of a bout with another Alice. This one was an almost-perfect copy of Alice. The only difference is that this Alice's eyes were a dead brown, not the vivid electric blue of the real thing.

She fought almost as well, though. Carlos jumped out of the way of one of her blades—copied to the one that the original Alice favored—and he dodged around her foot as it launched towards it head. He had lost his weapon on one of the earlier obstacles, which left him at a distinct disadvantage.

Carlos knew that Dr. Kents would watch him die with only a small pang of remorse for a failed experiment. The thought added liquid fire in his veins.

With an extra spurt of speed he darted around her next attack—a flying kick. He grabbed her leg midair and threw her into one of the walls. Her grip slackened on the her short sword and he used her disorientation to twist the weapon from her grip.

She sliced at him with her second sword, but he parried her easily. The fake Alice's eyes widened as she realized that she might lose this fight. When first started to kill Alices, he had been surprised at the human emotions in even the most flawed of the clones.

Now he used her fear against her. He pressed his attack, brutally knocking the weapon from her hand. He stepped in closer.

"Please," She breathed, her face white with fear. The dull brown of her eyes finally shone with unshed tears.

Carlos drove the blade into her staring into those eyes.

A spurt of blood bubbled out of her move and onto his black armor. Her dead gaze bored into him as she slipped to the concrete floor, landing with a dull _thud_.

Carlos wiped the blood from his uniform.

Dr. Kents' slow clapping filled the room, resounding through Carlos' brain. The doctor leered at him through the protective safety glass of the observation room.

"Congratulations, Mr. Oliveria. It seems that you have passed the test."

Carlos stepped out into the sunshine for the first time since he'd activated the bomb in front of the compound.

It was funny, he thought to himself. He had often cursed the virus for the many things it had taken from him: the civilizations, the people, even the forests. He had come to despise the desolate landscape that provided no shelter and fewer resources to his comrades.

But as he blinked in the harsh daylight, he felt the oddest sensation of comfort to be out of the dim fluorescent lights and dead gray walls of the complex. He had never noticed before, just how blue the sky was, untouched by the plight of the men living beneath it.

A single hawk flew through the sky. Carlos was still somewhat disturbed by his enhanced senses, but his superior eyes picked up the details of the bird. Somehow, it was still uninfected.

Perhaps if the skies were still untouched, mankind still had a chance. There were some things the T-9 virus could not destroy.

The falsely polite cough of Dr. Kents dragged him back to the present. He felt his face close off into the expression of a soldier in enemy territory.

"The last trace we had of Alice, she had abducted a helicopter," Dr. Kents grimaced "And was headed southeast of her. The copter only had enough gas for four hours or so. Given your current condition," Carlos held back a grimace of his own—the doctor was far to self-congratulating on the success of his latest _experiment _"You should be able to meet up with her within 72 hours. You are to bring her back if possible. If she does not cooperate, you have Umbrella Corps permission to eliminate Alice Abernathy. Do you understand?"

As though Dr. Kents hadn't gleefully recited his mission to Carlos daily. Not trusting his voice to remain calm, Carlos merely nodded.

Dr. Kents peered at him a moment longer. "I've spent a lot of time building that body. Do try to keep it in one piece." With that, he turned and walked back into the shelter of the compound.

Carlos hitched his gear further up his back and took a step beyond the gates. One step farther from Umbrella Corp. One step closer towards killing Alice.


	17. Chapter 17

**Alice**

Even with my enhanced abilities, the hike back to the camp was grueling.

We headed back into the mountains, not following any sort of pattern or trail that I could see. Another boulder dislodged itself as I stepped on it and I held back a curse as I went sliding down a few feet before I caught myself again. Normally I wasn't this clumsy.

I guess battling two hordes in one day takes a lot out of you.

"How much longer do we have?" I struggled to keep my breathing even. Just because I felt as bruised and busted as the helicopter I'd crashed didn't mean I had to let my new "friends" know. I didn't think we'd be braiding each other's hair anytime soon, and I needed all the help I could get if they decided I was a threat.

"About 11 more minutes till we hit camp," Roy panted, clearly making no effort to hide how out of breath he was. Sweat dripped off his face and coated the back of his thin t-shirt.

"Why do you care what time it is? Sundown and sunup are the only times that matter anymore." Marta tramped passed us, attempting—and failing—to disguise a limp.

"Cramp?" I asked sweetly. Marta just glared back at me.

"No use in counting anything but the number of infected." She said. _What a charmer. _

"Not for me," Roy grinned as he fished something on a chain out of his pocket. The last rays of the sun glinted off of the gold exterior as he swung it back and forth on the chain. "Ol' Grandda's pocket watch. Been through two world wars and a couple small ones besides."

"Can I see it?" I asked. Roy tossed it to me. My hand snatched it from the air before my brain caght up-a sign of just how tired I was. "Aren't you worried about tossing it around?"

"Nah. Grandda always said it would survive the end of the world." He gestured to the barren landscape. "Looks like it has."

It did look a lot worse for wear. The golden surface was marked with dents and scratches, its simple geometric design as scuffed as a well-worn shoe.

I flicked the watch open. The dial must have been white originally, but it had faded to a warm yellow. It was a simple watch little design to get in the way of its function. The words "Reality can be beaten with enough imagination," were engraved on the case opposite the watch face. It wasn't pretty to look at, but it felt like a challenge. _I've made it this far, _it seemed to say, _I'd like to see you do better_.

"You should take better care of it." I handed it back to Roy carefully. I could barely remember the last time I had something that was more than just a tool to survive. I'd never been one for keeping knick knacks, even before the outbreak, and I'd left my few personal items at the mansion above the Hive.

"It's not like I keep it around so's I can tell the time." Roy said, polishing it on his filthy shirt. "I just like to think that—well, since it saw my grandfather through a few rough times, maybe it'll see me through a few more." He shrugged. "Or not.

Jemison had stopped a few feet ahead.

"We're here." He said.

Jemison lead us to a rocky outcropping. He pushed aside what looked like a large rock, but was actually a piece of reinforced camouflaged metal. The opening dropped down into the earth and into the darkness.

_How fucking ironic. _I thought to myself. _It looks like Alice is going down the Rabbit Hole. _

If there was a God, he had a twisted sense of humor.


End file.
